Charles Wellesley

Biography

Dublin welcomed Charles Wellesley on 17 November 1873, and from that first breath he seemed destined for the footlights. Over the next seven decades he built a career that flickered across silent screens, most memorably as the tormented protagonist of *The Wolf Man* (1923), the intrepid explorer in *The Lost World* (1925), and the enigmatic monarch of *The Secret Kingdom* (1917). Off-camera, he shared his life with actress Ina Rorke, their marriage a quiet counter-melody to the roar of early Hollywood. His final curtain fell on 24 July 1946 in Amityville, New York, but the images he left behind still race through projectors and imaginations alike.